A Bracebridge man recently pled guilty to possession of child pornography.
Appearing in a Bracebridge courtroom, Conner Arkell, 22, pled guilty to charges stemming from a 2020 OPP investigation.
Court heard on Feb. 24, 2020 the OPP received information from Google that a Google drive had downloaded child pornography. From there, they were able to discover the account user, phone number and email address.
On April 14, 2020 a search warrant was executed by the Ontario Provincial Police Child Sexual Exploitation Unit and the Bracebridge OPP Detachment and Arkelll was arrested and charged. The police ultimately found searches for pre-teen child pornography in the search history of the computer and four, gif videos depicting child pornography.
Crown attorney Alayna Jay asked the judge whether he would like to have a description of the video content read in open court. The Justice said he would prefer a word document with the description but specified he didn’t want the information on his computer and he wanted to view it in the presence of a police officer. He ultimately choose to read it directly from the Crown’s computer.
Crown Jay called child pornography a scrounge that caused incalculable harm to the victims and to society. The defense argued that it was a small amount of material found, and that the defendant was young and remorseful for his actions.
Arkell was ultimately sentenced to two months of house arrest, two months under curfew, a term of probation and certain restrictions on his internet searches.
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